My coworker Marcus is from Detroit. At 44, he had a heart attack. His doctor told him: lose eighty pounds, or you will not walk your daughter down the aisle. Three years ago, our company sent him to our Tokyo office. His first morning here, at 5:30 a.m., he went out to the walking path by the river near our office. He made it eleven minutes. Then he sat down on a bench and cried. Tokyo runners went past him. Thin. Fast. Nobody looked at him. Nobody here looks at anybody. His phone wallpaper was his daughter. She was nine. He came back the next morning anyway. He came back in the rain. He came back in January. He came back for eight straight weeks when the scale didn't move a single pound. Nobody on that path ever said a word to him. On the path, there is a first-floor apartment. Every morning, an old man stands outside it, sweeping his front step. Mr. Kaneda. 88. He never waved. Never nodded. Just swept. On day 282, Marcus's father died in Detroit. He flew home for the funeral. When he came back to Tokyo, he couldn't make himself go. One day. Then two. Then nine. On the tenth morning, he went back, just to sit. There was a note taped to his bench. Shaky handwriting. English. "Day 291. Nine days missing. Are you sick? — Room 101" Marcus asked me to come with him to translate. Room 101 was Mr. Kaneda. Mr. Kaneda was a high school track coach for 41 years. He told us he cannot watch a person run without counting. Then he brought out a notebook. A coach's log. Every morning since Marcus's first day. In Japanese. I translated it for him at the kitchen table. "Day 1. Very slow. Sat down at eleven minutes. Cried." "Day 2. Came back anyway." "Day 37. Did not sit." "Day 112. Rain. Passed the bridge. Did not stop." "Day 200. Smiled at a dog." "Days 282 to 290. Absent." Marcus put his hand over his mouth. For 291 days, he thought nobody on that path even knew he existed. Mr. Kaneda said one more thing. I translated it slowly. "A coach's job is not to make you fast. It is to notice the day you don't come back." The next morning, there was an 88-year-old man on the bench with a stopwatch. They never shared a language. Every morning, Mr. Kaneda held up one thumb. That was it. That was the whole coaching. On March 1st of this year, Marcus ran the Tokyo Marathon. At 35 kilometers, he hit the wall. He walked. He wanted to stop. Everything in him wanted to stop. At 41 kilometers, there was a folding chair on the side of the road. Mr. Kaneda was sitting in it, holding his notebook up over his head. On the open page, in big black letters: "DAY 1,066" Marcus finished in six hours and forty-one minutes. He had lost eighty-three pounds. At the finish line, somebody asked him how he did it. He said, "Detroit doesn't quit. And somebody was counting." Mr. Kaneda showed me the last page of the notebook. "Day 1,066. Finished. As expected." So if you're on day one of something hard, and nobody seems to notice you, or you're on day 291, and you've missed nine days, go back to the bench. Somebody is counting.